Building Hardships
Cold Showers
I take cold showers now. I cannot emphasize enough how much it ruins my day. I absolutely abhor it. It makes my entire body go into shock and I can barely even think about the fact that I'm even taking a shower. It basically turns my brain off. Somehow, I do manage to get the soap done and wash my face/hair in a bit under two minutes. I scrub though, so your mileage may vary. The burning question, though, is why do I do this??
Hot Showers
I take cold showers because now, whenever I get out of the shower and throw some nice warm clothes on, I'm in heaven. It used to be the other way around. I would get in the shower - it would be a nice 10 degrees warmer than my internal temp - I would bask. I'd take my sweet, sweet time getting that soap lather, and more to wash my hair. Probably around 20 minutes a day spent enjoying my shower and getting ready for the day. I'd like to inspect that for a second. Why are showers good? Why do we have to enjoy the task? The goal is to clean our body. It's actually a sort of chore. Nobody enjoys taking out the trash. I understand a sort of "spa" experience in the shower or bath as a nice opportunity. Some alone time to think and lounge. But every day??? Getting out of the shower used to suck. Now, I just can't wait until it's over. I flipped the script on life, and now I get, uhhhh.... 2,798.33 hours back. (Assuming I shower for 5 minutes instead of 15 every day, I live to be 72, and leap years don't exist.) Obviously, just a rough estimate - but that 10 minutes a day over 46 years is a grand 2,500 hours to be modest. Crazy! And I don't believe my main goal is to save time. My main goal is to make things suck.
Building Hardships
Tell me what's worse:
Person A: This person has had everything for their entire life (fortune, leisure, family, the works). Person B: This person's life sucks. They've been poor their whole life, not many friends, they work extremely hard every day to just barely get by.
Now take everything away from person A. Take it all and make them work hard all day every day, give them no money for it, and their family dies in a horrific accident or something, I don't know. They would probably kill themselves! No joke. They would be completely broken, ruined.
Give everything to person B. Money, new friends, less work. Man, what a win! They love life now!
These are two extremes, but building up hardships really does have an impact on the way we respond to changes in our lives. If you're down bad every day for a week and something good happens, that's a great feeling! If you're up on a high horse, there's a long way to fall. I don't mean go be homeless for a year and come back to real life to experience some form of joy. But building a callous on top of your life can certainly impact the way we see the world. So for me? It's cold showers every day. It's working an extra hour after everything is done. It's going to bed early instead of playing video games alone on a Tuesday.
Build up those super small hardships - and they sorta group together. And yea, it makes for a boring and dull and kinda sucky life right now, but when something good happens??? It feels that much better, because you're not showering yourself in "good" feelings all day every day.
Side Note
Chemically, I'm sure this has something to do with depression or something. I'm not a doctor so probably don't even read this but think about someone who's just dumping dopamine into their brain all day. Social Media. Fast Food. Gambling. Drugs. Impulse Purchasing. Video games. Porn. Nicotine. Alcohol. TV. Whatever it is.
Mass producing these good feelings is probably pretty hard on the brain. You're just setting yourself up for failure. These are all just methods of instant gratification, and what happens when you go back to normal life?? It sucks, dude. If you just went from hanging out all day on the couch, jerking off, eating tasty food that you didn't have to make, watching TV and sleeping a bunch to a baseline human life of working 6-8 hours and staying healthy with exercise and chores? You're going to feel that one pretty deep in your roots. That's literally the life of a king. If you told someone from the 1600s that was what your day looked like, you would be a literal god amongst men. If you do this, probably stop??? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Always imagine the comedown. Staying high forever isn't a good plan, and there's a lot more fulfilling ways to get gratification. It does take longer, but I do think when I make my days suck, I feel a little bit better about myself when I go to bed.